Feb. 19 Letters: Taxes in Hampton, Art in Newport News

February 18, 2013

No Surprises Here

The recent Daily Press article informing Hampton taxpayers of downtown's planned 23 percent real estate tax increase came as no surprise to me nor should surprise anyone else that has the misfortune of living in this city. These same tax-and-deficit-spend liberal Democrats have demonstrated almost daily that they cannot and will not live within the city's means.

City manager Mary Bunting stated that this increase was necessary to maintain the city's current level of spending. This statement all too clearly demonstrates our city leaders' philosophy on running the government, i.e., spend for every desired item, necessary or not, with no consideration as to how it will be paid for. This government is maintained by the three classes of voters: 1) Those that pay no taxes and only reap the benefits of someone else's labor; 2) Those that are misinformed and 3) Those that will reap financial benefits as a result of the city's wasteful spending. Those of us that pay taxes and pay attention are in the minority, making the possibility that Hampton will ever be a livable city extremely remote.

As pointed out by the Daily Press, administrative waste [apparently] is not a consideration in lowering Hampton's tax burden. We spend millions on economic development only to see every plan fail miserably with the taxpayer taking the loss. We are paying bureaucrats to find ways to waste taxpayer money.

For those of us that are trapped here we can only hope for an opportunity to get out.

Ashton Haywood

Hampton

"Why?" of the beholder

As the poet Joyce Kilmer so eloquently proclaimed, "Only God can make a tree"

It would have been nice if the local Patrons of the "Arts" had read the poet and considered his words before making preparations to install the "refugee from a recycling center" in the Warwick Boulevard median.

In thinking of ways to describe "the thing" to my non-artistic friends and relatives the only comparable items I could come up with were (1) a twisted rope of barbed formed into a circle and, (2) a small Ferris wheel from a primitive carnival.

I would not have been surprised if there had been a major upheaval in the Peninsula Memorial Park as a result of all the interred people rolling over in their graves when "the thing" was installed in front of the gate to their final resting places.

After further thought it occurred to me that there might be room in a far corner of the cemetery to bury the monstrosity. I would not be surprised if the arts "experts" behind this fiasco are the same as those responsible for the strange statuary in the Port Warwick / City Center area.